Dog-lovers, bad news: People can infect dogs with Covid-19!

Posted on May 19, 2020 by weehingthong

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Nature

NEWS  14 MAY 2020

Dogs caught coronavirus from their owners, genetic analysis suggests

But there’s no evidence that dogs can pass the virus to people.

Smriti Mallapaty

The first two dogs reported to have coronavirus probably caught the infection from their owners, say researchers who studied the animals and members of the infected households in Hong Kong. An analysis of viral genetic sequences from the dogs showed them to be identical to those in the infected people.

Researchers suspected that the infection had been passed from the owners to the dogs, and the direct genomic link strongly supports that, says Malik Peiris, a virologist at the University of Hong Kong who led the study, which is published today in Nature1.

The study showed no evidence that dogs can pass the infection to other dogs or people, but it is impossible to be certain in which direction the virus traveled “so we have to keep an open mind”, says Peiris.

Although the analysis confirms that people with COVID-19 can infect dogs, the probability of this happening is low, says Arjan Stegeman, a veterinary epidemiologist at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. In the study only 2 of the 15 dogs who lived with infected people caught the disease.

But other scientists say the possibility that pets might spread the virus between each other, and to people, needs to be properly investigated as part of managing future outbreaks.

Caution advised

Since the infections in the two canines in Hong Kong — a Pomeranian and a German shepherd — were reported, other pets have tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including a cat in Hong Kong and another two in New York state. Four tigers and three lions at New York City’s Bronx Zoo also tested positive. Studies in cats have found that they can pass the virus to other felines without showing symptoms.

For more:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01430-5

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Infection of dogs with SARS-CoV-2

Nature (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 emerged in Wuhan in December 2019 and caused the pandemic respiratory disease, COVID-191,2. In 2003, the closely related SARS-CoV had been detected in domestic cats and a dog3. However, little is known about the susceptibility of domestic pet mammals to SARS-CoV-2. Two out of fifteen dogs from households with confirmed human cases of COVID-19 in Hong Kong SAR were found to be infected using quantitative RT–PCR, serology, sequencing the viral genome, and in one dog, virus isolation. SARS-CoV-2 RNA was detected in a 17-year-old neutered male Pomeranian from five nasal swabs collected over a 13-day period. A 2.5-year-old male German Shepherd dog had SARS CoV-2 RNA on two occasions and virus was isolated from nasal and oral swabs. Both dogs had antibody responses detected using plaque reduction neutralization assays. Viral genetic sequences of viruses from the two dogs were identical to the virus detected in the respective human cases. The animals remained asymptomatic during quarantine. The evidence suggests that these are instances of human-to-animal transmission of SARS-CoV-2. It is unclear whether infected dogs can transmit the virus to other animals or back to humans.

For the full article:

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2334-5?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_content=organic&utm_campaign=NGMT_USG_JC01_GL_Nature

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